Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

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e e e I'm calling the meeting to order uh thank you for your attendance and participation this the purpose of the public hearing is to gather information from the public to help the commission formulate recommendation in order to ensure a fair and orderly meeting where everyone can participate the commission requests that you act respectfully to everyone in attendance and follow the public hearing procedures the chairperson will call the public hearing item the planning department will present the staff recommendation Commissioners may ask questions of staff there will be a presentation by the applicant or Representatives

Commissioners may ask questions of the applicant the chairperson will will open the public hearing the chairperson will call for public comments from persons in support of the items followed by persons in opposition the applicant will have the chance for rebuttal comments the uh the chairperson will close the public hearing Commissioners may ask questions uh there may be discussion and take action speakers must speak from the podium and state their name and address for the record there's also a sign in for you the chairperson reserves the right to establish a time limit for all speakers to ensure that everyone can speak the designation of a spokesperson for groups sharing a common point of view is encouraged all comments and questions will be directed to the chair from the podium and not to the applicant staff or to the audience when the hearing is closed additional public comments are not permitted we'll now have roll call um I'm acting as the roll call attendee today and we'll be taking the votes so Janette Johnson present Chad Gearhart here Rosa kavos here Terry Robinson here Dan briyan here myON Len lener here and then the last position is vacant so six are present we do have a quorum um have there been any Communications from the public to staff in regards to what we're hearing we haven't had any Communications thank you uh have there been any exp parte Communications by members of the commission seeing none uh is there any conflict of interest by members of the

commission all right then the next item is election of officers for this year um are there any nominations for chairperson I would nominate Janette Johnson for chairperson I would second okay so we had a motion by Chad and second by Rosa are there any other nominations I think I'm supposed to ask a three times are there any other nominations any nominations then all in favor of um electing Janette as the chairman say I I I thank you opposed and vice chairman are there any nominations for vice chair I would move to elect uh Chad I would second that it's been moved and seconded to uh nominate Chad had as Vice chairman are there any other nominations any nominations then all in favor of Chad being elected to Vice Chair say I please I opposed that motion carries congratulations to us okay so Janette you can continue on all right um first is uh CU 2501 SCF real estate LLC requesting a conditional use permit to establish a demolition landfill and recycling facility on property zoned rr1 residential Reserve District located at

Southwest 25th Street in manen Township okay so Kim has been the one working on all of these projects so I'm going to turn it over over to her and she will go through item number one for you all right item number one this is an application that seeks approval for a conditional use permit to establish a demolition landfill and recycling facility on property Zone rr1 residential Reserve District it is located on Northwest 25th Street and it consists of about uh 36.5 Acres next we have have the general location um showing the site within the county and you can see it as the um blue star here we have the vicinity map um the site is outlined in green 13 letters were sent out to Property Owners within a th000 feet no public comment has been received here we have the site plan the previous owner used the side as a borrow area for the highway 243 alignment project around 2014 as a Dumping Ground for construction materials this use was not permitted and the current owner is working to bring the site into compliance um all of the restrictions that exist within within the rr1 will remain with additional restrictions as set set forth in conditions as expressed uh here in so staff recommends approval of the requested subject to the following conditions one obtain a solid waste processing permit from the Kansas Department of Health and environment

Bureau and Bureau of Waste Management two prior to commencing any work ensure copper or Fiber Optic lines along Northwest 25th Street are located three operating hours are limited to Monday through Friday for from 7:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. all other activities must adhere to the statement of use dated December 19 2024 and that concludes um item number one do the Commissioners have any questions of Staff how is this property if it wasn't permitted how were they allowed to function as this Dumping Ground for K well um it we didn't know nobody had called it in so um they they were just using it it happens frequently where land gets used um in a manner that they don't necessarily know um the borrow pit was from quite a few years ago and it was a state project uh the prior owners were ham um ham operating on behalf of that K do project and it was probably assumed that it was an allowable use and several years had passed after the project had ended and I believe that we had received some questions about it but then about the same time ownership changed and with the new owners wanting to use it for a different purpose than a borrow pit um they had reached out to us and we had communicated with them that it needed a conditional use permit any other

questions all right would the applicant like to make some comments thank you madam chairman members of the commission my name is Vernon jarbo I'm with Salone law firm in TOA here on behalf of the applicant U today uh with me Roger sitting closest to me um is the manager for SCF be managing this project next to him is Josh withb engineering um and they've done the work that we've seen here um we recognize the three requirements uh that staff has placed on the property and we're comfortable with everything that was said by staff in terms of their presentation to you uh we believe it will uh actually be a better use of property going forward sitting with random trucks dumping whatever they felt like dumping when they went by and saw an open space that was ungated so we have secured the site um and done the things necessary to restrict other people from random dumping and would intend to go forward with our operation as I said Roger manages will manage the facility going forward it's basically to gather and recycle uh asphalt concrete clean dirt stuff like that some of the material gets recycled some of it that's not usable for those

purposes if it's clean would go into the hole to fill the hole up eventually so that's our intended use uh if you have questions I probably don't know the technical answers but bet this is probably more for staff what is the length of this cup is there a length once the C is approved um unless you put a condition on that it stays with these owners it's uh it runs with the land so um if they sold it to someone else the the new owners would be subject to the same conditions of the cup um there is a an abandonment time frame within our regulations at this point where if it's not used for the purpose that they have asked it can be abandoned after a period of 48 uh sorry 24 months after two years did the township have any comment assume the township has notified any yes no no comment on the road or anything okay I have a question um is there any concern about uh not being open on a Saturday morning or will that could that possibly come down at a later time that you would decide to be open on a Saturday certainly could be but as I understand the materials all be brought in by either ourselves or contractors working with us so we okay it's not Vern also would once the uh pit is filled and covered is that will it still remain a recycling uh site well if we're that successful yes um recycling that that's that's what they try to do they

try to make reuse of all these materials that we see that are dug up and torn down on typically Road other types of projects and then the unused unusable materials would then be hauled off to another site when did when did they purchased this property was it 24 or 23 this last year not very long ago we haven't really done anything to utilize it because we figured out that what was happening there wasn't pered at all it's one of those things when I first looked at it I've told a lot of people this including J when I just looked at it I said borrow pit by K do I just knew what it was this the kind of work I do then I know what K do does which is whatever they want to do so so you you they knew when they were coming in and purchasing this property that the potential risks that were involved I don't think they actually understood that it wasn't permitted at the time they bought it I don't did that homework until after they end so how how do we know as a general public how do we know that there's not toxic material out there or stuff that shouldn't be in there has there been any testing or anything that's part part of the process for the solid waste processing permit what's what guarantees are there that there's no contamination out

there don't we have with the guarantee there's no contamination we're not aware of any and I don't there was no material at the site uh material that was at the site when I first looked at it I mean there were piles of various kinds of things that were stacked around but it was just exactly the same stuff that SCF does which is deal with soil broken up concrete broken fle that's what was there so we haven't seen any evidence of anything like drones of anything no facility there no building if step can maybe if staff can interject just a little bit so that we can explain how we got to where we're at um we received a complaint from a neighbor in regards to dumping on the property we reached out to the owners to say hey we've looked at this site and we see that there's no permit what is being dumped and when I say we got to complaint it actually went to our Environmental Health Department so the Environmental Health Department had reached out to us to see whether or not there was a conditional use permit we found that there was not and so we reached out to the owners and they contacted us um The Dumping was something that they was not their people that was do that were doing it it was other people randomly coming on to the property and dumping stuff um after we reached out and notified them they put up an addition they already had a gate up but they put additional blockades around the property to keep keep people from being able to get on because what was happening is at least one time a truck went around the gate onto someone else's land and into the property to dump the material and then left um we were only aware of the one situation of a dumping being done we don't know if it happened on other circumstances that were not noticed um but environmental health was involved and they had some of the material and I don't believe that

there's been any concern at this point that anything dumped on the the ground has been harmful um we just wanted to make sure that the the new owners brought it into compliance with whatever needed to be done based on their actions how how how many years was it where there was just an open gate and anybody could dump anything we don't know 10 years maybe I mean the k do rework was probably in 2017 2018 and prior to that it would have been Farm ground and then it was K do used the land they came and dug the dirt out and used that dirt to build up one of the on-ramp off-ramps of the highway that was just across from the property um and then the property continued under the same ownership for several years um prior to the current owners taking ownership so what happens if if kdhe goes out there and process of getting this permit they find something detrimental then what happens it'll have to be cleaned up and kind of a big picture analysis um there's a law out there called C comprehensive environmental recovery liability act something like that and basically it says that polled the ground or the owner ofed ground you have to deal so if that were to happen then we'd have to deal with it now there might be claims back against previous owners K and whoever might have been using before

us but I mean is that a possibility yes that is we haven't seen any evidence of it at this point um you plan on scale scale house any other improvements is any of that not this time okay mobile mobile crushing equipment I assume for processing fuel storage on site fuel storage on is there anything we need to be talking about a finished elevation of this site if they were to fill the borrow back in you know I guess I see on here that they've said 30t stockes not have your stockes over 30t as that site was to fill in about finished elevation um we did not consider finished elevation mainly because this isn't like a landfill where you're going to continue to bring trash in and in and in and build it up and up um right now there's a fairly substantial amount of hole that could be filled and I think that it's going to take quite a bit to bring in and fill and even to that degree whatever's stockpiled and filled on there would be clean rubble and would fall under the permit that would need to occur with kdhe and so if they have any sort of height requirements but we did not consider that should we condition this based on their 30 feet stock file is this part of

the conditions I mean they they've proposed 30 feet anything that falls within their proposed uh is as option number three it would be subject to those conditions they have to adhere to that statement and so then if they want to go beyond or modify that they would excuse me have to come back to our office for either a minor or a major Amendment to the conditional use permit are there any other uh questions for the applicant thank you uh we'll now open the public hearing are there any comments from persons in support of the uh item are there any public comments from persons in opposition to the item if you'll go to the microphone please and sign in my name's I live at 5530 nor going which just down the road I used to own the land where they put really I don't really have a lot of opposition to what they're doing I just had some questions about how it's going to affect our ability to farm around it if that's Chang anything I did also over the years they've been ding a lot of house a lot of lot of stuff in that groundwater so I just kind of curious on how that was testing out they they're

still pumping dust or what from plant put down truck pum it in water it's just mostly our question on how we're going to be able to farm around Chang what do you mean they're pumping dust from the asalt plant they come down there with a kind of a like a tanker truck and they run a hose from the truck down there with a pump pumping that dust down into the water they've been doing that since it's been open Asphalt dust asphalt PL they previously dumped quite a bit of from what we've seen just farming around here I know made a little inconvenient when put the gate up in the the concrete barriers because I used to drive around there to get to the other side there's only I think we're farming 10 acres otherwise I really they get the permits and everything can I ask a question of him do you still have access to your Farmland yes come in from the east from East you want to pull that um the map up

theity so are you farming the land that is on their ground or okay my recommendation would be that after the meeting you connect with the owner so that you can work out how um that would work in regards to farming if new owners so that they know who it is that's handling that and if they're going to continue to have you farm that all right that's gotta was thank you for your comments and questions um would the applicant want to respond to anything that's been said you don't need to but actually we were curious about who had been farming we didn't know so now we know and we definitely would want to talk to him um saying we're going to change any relationship we did want to know obviously who's using all right we will close the public hearing and are there any other questions or discussion among the Commissioners everybody got their questions answered and all right the chair will entertain a motion on this request I would move to approve the

request based on the staff recommendations I'd second that all right it's been moved and seconded that we uh approve the request subject to staff's um conditions want to call the rooll uh Terry Robinson yes Dan briyan yes Janette Johnson yes myON Len Witter yes Chad Gearhart yes Rosa kassos yes uh with a vote of six to Z this item will be heard um in front of the board of County Commissioners what is this month this is February 10 so it'd be heard March 13 at the bard of County Commission meeting we will move on to uh p2501 the Water District number two Tower one subdivision preliminary and fi final plat all right item number two this this an application that seeks approval for the preliminary and final plat approval to to establish a legal built side of subdivision known as crwd number two Tower 1 it's located at 9525 Northwest 46 Street and it consists of 86 acres here is the general location of the site um as you can see with uh the blue star here we have the aerial map showing the side in the yellow um which currently has the water tower here we have the pr Ary plat and then we have the final

plat staff recommends approval of the preliminary and final plat of the crwd number two Tower 1 subdivision subject to the following conditions one execution of additional dedication of the side as a public rideway on Northwest 46 Street as required by the Shaunie County Public Works Department two uh notes to be included on the final plat one is the Rural Water District number two um is permitted to maintain an East West Drive within dedicated rway until such time as improvements are constructed at that point the RW number two shall cease using the East West Drive and provide an alternative entrance at its sole expense the second note is to have the water M current ly situated on the private property which will become part of the county rideway through Eastman acquisition or dedication will not occur relocation costs for rwd number two and then also a building permit will not be issued until the minor Amendment to the conditional use permit site development plan is approved and this concludes item number two thank you uh are there any questions of staff from the commissioner can you explain a little bit more about that East West Road they can use it for so long I guess I got boss on that part if to go back okay um on slide that the bottom bullet no the East West Drive is dedicated R way is that private property so they have a drive on their property right now and so

right here okay so when the building is built they're going to put in a drive from their entrance and go along the front and down to the building but if in the future um Road improvements are made where they would take over any of that road right away and need to uh take over the land where that drive is at then that drive would have to be moved but until that time which is an unknown factor at this point it may or may noten in the next 20 50 100 years we don't any other questions would the applicant like to make a presentation good evening I'm Ben Kramer with Kramer Consulting here on behalf of the applicant water district number two County I do have with me this evening water district manager and so we brought this case what they were looking to do is put a building up we met with staff about doing AAL use permit

and uh got into that to do the condition use permit that we'd have to Plat the property uh so we went back and and started doing the platting some some of the things that were discussed at our meeting were the one of the main things was the additional rideway and uh because the road there is constructed south of the uh section line completely South section line currently the road's out of RightWay onto onto the Water District's property and uh so we're going to you know we're agreed to give some additional RightWay one of the questions that we have is that staff recommends uh approval granting that they on the condition that we Grant or we give additional RightWay one of the questions we have is we we're showing additional right away 25 ft is that is that what we're looking for U is that is that the additional RightWay that that the staff is looking for uh so that's one of our questions and if that is the case then if if what we're showing the 25 ft in the district is uh in agreeance that that they would give that that condition that they would give that additional RightWay that 25 Fe um the other the other condition I think is just that they can maintain their right away and that or their Road and then at such time that the county does widen the road they would they would they would do away with their Road at their expense and it would be the County's expense to relocate the water water lines and such because they're in private easement today so if we could just get a

clarification on that additional RightWay um so the additional RightWay that was requested by the public works um Department was 45 ft so it was it was 45 from what point though I believe it was from the from the center line Center Line of right away or the center line of the road so an additional 45 ft from the center line of the the road um whereas you're showing I believe 25 ft from the and and you had inquired with Miss Perez in regards to being able to stick to the 25 feet and Shaunie County um is asking for the full 45 and so um we were giving you the option to present that tonight in regards to your request for the 25 versus the County's request for the full 45 Okay so can I yeah absolutely just make sure that if you have copies that we end up with one so that we unless it's part of the record this is justl just you can see where that Road located ATK okay um before the end of the if I have one that's so I just wanted to to show you where that where the road is currently in relationship to the dedicated rideway that we're dedicating or showing to dedicate is a 25

ft which is just North of that proposed Gravel drive so one of the reasons that we're looking at this is that that there's a water tower on the site and periodically every 20 25 years or so that tower has to have be painted sand blast is painted um sometimes there's equipment that comes on and off of it there's sand blast trucks and and water pressure tanks that have to go on this site to give any additional rideway over that 25t starts to hinder their operations here um there's there's some safety concern with when they're painting this you you sand blast you paint if that road actually gets close to their property that's another safety concern that they have to be to protect the public of falling debris um paint overspray those sort of things um the also just just the general maintenance when they're on top of this Tire if something falls off the tire and that rideways oh I'm I'm going to say just I don't know exactly how far it be but 20 25 ft away from the tire could could something actually bounce off the tire and hit somebody that's in that in that rideway that at that present it wouldn't because that rway doesn't come back that far Riley might have something to add to that I know if you do or not but yeah we have we have several antennas on top of there you guys realize that all of the internet we have all these satellite antennas or radio antennas on top of the tower and in order to get them up this is a spear it's a big ball

up on top of the single leg and it goes out there I mean the shadow of this thing will be in the road right away if we if we give that full RightWay if we try to get satellite satellite but these antennas up and down off there they can't pull them straight up and then drag them over the ball they have to go outside of the fence to get those on there and anytime that we take material in or out of this area to put in this storage building we'll be parking in the street in order to try to get in here um and I don't know if you'd ever have to lay this Tower down to work on it if anything had ever happen like that I mean we can do that right now but if we put this additional on on there I don't think we'd be able to do it if you look at the C the cost to the county when you build this road if you buil it on the if you added your extra Lane because I understand they're looking for three lanes and sidewalk if you would build that on the north side of the road in the mile from over at hoders road to Hawk Road you only have to move two driveways and two water meters if you build it on the south side where we're given this easement there's 11 driveways 11 water meters water M that goes across 46 Street water M that runs down along the side of 46 Street it'd be considerably more expensive to build on our side than if you put it on the other side and the water district bought this property years and years ago and it just seems unfair and I know the world's not fair but it seems unfair to me that 100% of this RightWay is on the Water District's property and not one inch of it on the guy on the north side of the road

and I guess that's all I got to tell you I think I think the big question is is when do when do they expect any kind of Road expansion in that area we get kind of comment from absolutely that's why he's here okay Kurt me house director of Public Works oh CT house director of Public Works uh you know that's a good question and if I had to be honest with you I don't think that 4 46 Street out there will probably be improved within 30 years but at some point it will and we need right away when we modernize the road um we talk about cost sounds legitimate but it also very costly to move a road when you widen a road you basically take that existing footprint and you extend it out here we're taking all that emment of that existing Road and we're moving it North so we're moving a whole lot more material we're having to compact that material so the cost of any project where you're moving the center line of the road is significantly more than if you're widening or building on an existing footprint not only that but without knowing what the grades are in relation to the adjacent property if you're in a cut or area I think you can see if you move a road it gets very expensive because you have to move that embankment a large volume of material

from one location to another so typically when we improve a road we improve it on the existing rway you might ask well how did that road get so far off the section line I'm sorry could have happened 200 years ago could happen not 200 because Kansas probably didn't exist then but 150 years ago we don't know could have been an Old Wagon Road and at some point it deviated from the section line maybe at some point in the past the section point the quarter points the section Corners were mislocated don't know this is just how it is right now and we prefer to build on an existing Center Line I think we've uh told the water district that this will not impact them in 30 years they may need to relocate because their Tower their water tank will be inadequate for the needs in the future so from a public work standpoint this is a normal request uh we don't think it's excessive this is a major collector and for major collectors with open ditches we have a 90 foot RightWay 45 foot on the South Side 45 foot on the North side so are there any questions more than happy to answer is is there 90 feet dedicated right away Along the rest of 46 Street uh I don't I doubt it not on the south side but we got to start somewhere and typically when somebody reply we requested dedication take they could still operate this proposed Gravel Road on the rideway on the rway until some point until 30 years down the road you want to improve it yeah absolutely y if there's a need like uh the gentleman said if there's a need to at some point we have to relocate waterline that's

what we have to do they were there first so even though we're going to Encompass that area with right away we would be on the hook to pay them to relocate any other questions of the commission all right um are there any um persons that would like to speak in support of the item other than those that have spoken already are there any persons that would like to speak in opposition is there anything else the applicant would like to comment on just just a couple comments there is one we're not opposed to give you know that 90 fit is a standard rideway with it's just that all that rideway being taken from the south side of the road seems unjust and and none to get the 90 foot R none would have to be taken off that out the north side that's going to happen all the way down along here for every homeowner that's there um guess the second thing would be is that I know

what Mr NE is talking about is that as far as construction of the new road we understand it's going to be a three lane you know it's a turn lane um don't understand why the third lane couldn't just be built on to the north side and and not disturb the south side when you look at when you look at the bank profiles and everything and that would that would then center for the most part Center the road back up on the section I don't have anything further thank you one all right I understand we all got to live in our budget you got just like we do we all got a budget we got to live in if you look out there on 46 Street the banks on the South Side as he was talking about moving this dirt on the North is it's only a foot or two above the road there are some of the places on the south side that it's six seven foot above the actual surface of the road so if we're going to equal this dirt out and we're going to scoot these ditches and put most of them on the south side you're going to have to move more dirt off the South than you do off of the north right at the water tower the the north side is level with the road and again we all have to live within our budget and I know taxes are you you guys hear that I'm sure more than I do and I know you got to live in within what you can bring in but so does the water district and it just you're just kind of putting us hindering some of our service work on our towel if we put up another Tower it won't be at this location we'll just add a tower we've got some other property and we would just add a tower I can't see this this is our engineer I can't see this tower ever getting bigger or doing anything you bigger Tower up you

got to tear the whole footings and everything out start over we would probably move on out farther out into the center of the district and put up another tower out there so I mean as far as reworking the tower I can't see that ever happening here Ben could probably tell you more about that but I can't see it's ever reworking this Tower I see it's building another Tower farther up in the district and we're just trying to trying to help out 670 families in our corner of the county we I have to what you for thank you for all your comments we'll close the public hearing um Commissioners do you have questions or comments from my from my understanding nobody else on the south side has granted an easement so Public Works would have to get easements on everybody on the south side of the road before Anything Could Happen sure the way that we do that is that when when or if a plat happens those dedications begin um and then beyond that if there's not dedications already in place then they would start doing negotiations with owners and emminent domain proceedings and such like that to gain additional rideway thank you and nothing can be done if um the preliminary plaid is not approved so you're looking at both the preliminary and the final plat right now um the way that we're proposing is with the 45 foot the way they've asked is with the 25 foot and so you as the the planning Commissioners on this have the ability to decide how to move forward and once you've voted and how to move forward that's what would be recommended to the board of County Commissioners for um approval we would probably have a similar discussion with them at that

point um to see if there's a difference of opinion at the the BCC how how did the replatting come about again was that just because of this request so um this Tower will you go to the the one more down right here okay so when this Tower originally was built eons ago 70s 60s yeah they um they came in and got a use permit from the planning department at that time for this specific site with just the water tower so they have a conditional use permit right now for a public use facility um when they came in and started talking to us about putting a building when I go back and look at that site plan then we see on there that it the site plan shows just the water tower and so they needed to do an amendment of The conditional use permit to put the building on so that they could construct that building but as we started going down the rabbit hole um what I determined was that they could do an amendment to the conditional use permit site plan as a minor Amendment because it's not constructively changing the use or the the what's been permitted as a public use facility they're still going to use it for the same exact reason so my regulations allow me to Grant a minor Amendment just administratively if they say hey we would like to amend the site plan to add this building I have the ability to approve that administratively but when you're looking at the regulations as a whole this property should have been platted to allow for this water tower to be used to begin with my assumption is not knowing

the how's and the wise from the 70s that maybe the plat either wasn't required at that time or that they didn't require them to Plat because the only thing going on the property was a tower there wasn't going to be people on there there wasn't going to be you know it wasn't going to be daily um use where people were coming in and off of the tower it was just a tower and and so now that they're adding the building the use of it is changing a little bit um to the extent that there will occasionally be people coming on um maybe having a meeting occasionally there'll be storing equipment there is going to be a back in there there will be laterals so because of that I felt like it needed to comply with the regulations in regards to platting anything less than three acres and 200 feet of Frontage should be ploted for a use like this and so they're doing the minor Amendment site plan just administratively but the plat then gets them so that they have a properly platted parcel so at this point if they don't move forward with the building they grandfathered in as they are right now yes they would not like we're not making them make changes to it based on their current use but they would not be granting a an easement then no but I don't think that there's any question that they're moving forward with the building either way and we're not trying to prevent them from moving forward with the the building it's just trying to get the plat finalized with the specifics of what needs to be on that plat um and so everything else on the plat has been okay and everybody's agreed on everything it's just the matter of the 25 ft versus the 45 ft well my thought is is if this is 45 ft is a big deal they may want to look to another location to put their building what are you g to do with the

building what are you gonna do with the building a somew in and we'll someip we're not going toore anything outside lawn a lot of their PS and stuff now in the bottom of the water tower that will all be inside building not to anything outside I'm getting ready to retire and they have a lot of that you [Laughter] know there's a lot of record we a lot of Rec down ony road but you got to climb up on top of the bathroom and carrying up the ladder we would really like to put this building up up there they can store some 20 foot joints of pipe in it we've got a lawnmower we've got a side by side that they to do their exercise workor just basic tools all inside building and there'll be AAR facing the to they go in and out of that they can go through power but to get in the of the building they can just drive around corner and we go in there now I mean I was in there a couple timesday we had Le we have to there but I got the bottom of that full I don't have lawn of that's building we missed there won't be that much traffic in and out of it I mean it'll be not more than there is now yeah I mean I go in there and check chorine residual and like we was in there last week we had some problems with the Telemetry off the

Tower and the guys out wi we were in and out there or four times week for a just depends what happens out in the now iom myside of that fence you have to look out over the ball to see it and inside that if you drop top all right any other questions or comments Commissioners it sounds like we can approve it as it's platted or approve it with the 25 foot right of way so the plat

right now that's in front of you shows just the 25 but the recommendation would be that they would have to adjust that to the 45 so you can approve it as it's drawn up right now or you approve it based on the recommendations of Staff I'm move that we approve it on the recommendations of the staff I second it's been moved and seconded that we approve the plat based on the recommendations of the staff I've got to get okay um so Janette Johnson I want to look at your recommendations I'm sorry get to me last the recommendation she does have them up on the screen as well oh I see okay so that would be with the 45 with the 45 Fe all right I'll say uh no no Dan briyan yes Terry Robin yes myON no Rosa kassos no Chad Gearhart yes okay so you have a split vote which means that it fails to move forward with a recommendation of the 45t it does still move forward to the BCC on well once you have the plat through County Surveyor mapping and go through the whole process of getting the myar ready then bring it back to us then we'll take it to the BCC at that point so it failed

to be approved at 45 feet what that means is that it does still move forward but with the 25 feet okay all right everybody understand that thank you you want to pass this down to Joanie all right any uh comments from the public on non-agenda Planning and Zoning items all right discussion of planning related issues next steps for solar regulations well our new members probably haven't necessarily gotten up to speed on we okay so um we are are going to start looking towards the next steps of our solar regulations um history of where we got where we're at um in 22 2022 we had a couple of conditional use permits for solar Farms um that were considered and then approved in May June and like September of 22 um as we were going through those conditional use permits there was a lot of concern by not only the Planning Commission but some members of the board of County Commissioners that they didn't really know where to look what to do what considerations to take when um looking at a solar farm and so there was a request to my office that we look at doing regulations that set forth some reg some specifics about what a solar farm should look like and what we would want to regulate or not

regulate um it started down a path of just doing some research doing a survey um having some discussions here within the Planning Commission um moving forward to uh public hearings talking about moratoriums um 2023 we spent some time talking about moratoriums we had some presentations uh by various people some that were associated with wind and solar companies um Jeremy Goodwin with WIBW presented a representative came and talked about the downsides of wind and solar so we got people from all sides to come in and talk to us about whether or not Shaunie County would be good for wind and solar uh the next steps were we held a public hearing on a one-year band I I was directed at that point by the Planning Commission that uh the Planning Commission was interested in considering a ban on wind and a moratorium on solar and so we did a public Hearing in May 2024 at the Overland station where that was considered and both of those items were approved and sent over to the BCC we then had a another public Hearing in front of the BCC and again the ban was approved and the moratorium on solar was approved that moratorium is a one-ear moratorium it's a temporary re reprieve to give us time to get our act together figure out what regulations we may or may not want um do you want regulations is it possible that you've as you look at this you say we don't want regulations we would like to just allow solar if we want to allow solar and they come to us and when they come to us then we consider it at that time um you may decide that you do want regulations and then the question is are you going to allow regulations for any type of solar

farm or only smaller scale bigger scale you know what kind of considerations on size um there are three types of solar conversion systems that we have considered as a part of this whole process the first is personal that supports home and Business uses and we did not put that under the moratorium if someone comes to us and asks for a a building permit for solar panels on their house we grant that if a business comes to us and and this did happen with hills they put up a small solar farm at their company so long as it's supporting the the home or the business itself it's okay they can do it um the other type is limited uh those are either groups or entities that collectively create um an area where they put solar into play that could include a Cooperative or a municipality um the two solar Farms that we have were done by free state evergy so those would be considered to fall under this limited um I see limited versus utility scale also in the light of size um while we did not have that in this definition I think that that would be something that you would certainly want to consider um whereby utility May mean something that's very large in scale and limited would be smaller in scale or you could either one of them could be large in scale but you limit it on a size utility scale are all situations in which the electricity generated and collected is sold so whereby limited may be just for a certain group of people or it may be sold only to a certain group or used by a certain group of people utility scale goes into the mang GD and it just gets mixed in with all of the other electricity that's collected and then used by people so that moratorium that we have should expire at the end of May and so

as this is going through likely we can get pretty close to where we want to be by may but I highly doubt that we're going to have something approved so just in the the foreground know that we're probably going to need to ask for an extension of that moratorium or allow it to expire if it expires um it doesn't mean that we're in any situation of harm but if a solar application comes in and we don't have those regulations finished we would have to go ahead and proceed with that application even though the regulations are not finished if you ask for an extension of that moratorium and ask the BCC to extend it um that would just extend the the the protection of not having an application filed while we're trying to consider these regulations um so procedurally the recommendations that I am making at this point is that we have no cases set for March um but I would recommend that we set that meeting as a work session um it would allow me to give you some presentations on various topics and issues and allow you to start talking having discussion amongst yourselves about what it is that you really want to see um as you all know I sent out a little mini survey form asking you what your input is and pretty much across the board it it appears as though all of you would like to see solar moving forward um some I one of the questions I asked you know are you wanting something very specific regulated or more generic regulated and that was kind of split some people think that we should have more specific regulations and other people think we should have more generic regulations so I would like to to Really fuss that out and talk about it also I've spent some time reading through regulations of communities surrounding us or within the state of Kansas and I have at least two or three examples where it it may not be the right fit to just copy it word for word but maybe we

can take chunks of those regulations and put them together to make it something that's good for us um and so we can start working through that and then my anticipation would be then by maybe April May time frame we would have another work session where I have a a draft set that you could review um and go over those regulations and then start whittling it down taking stuff out making recommendations of things that you want to add and then at that point either we could do one of two things we could then go to just having a public meeting open house for people to come in and talk to you give input or we could go straight to taking that draft to a public hearing like we did at Great Overland station where you have a presentation of a draft and they give you comment but then the question is if they give you comments and you want to make changes then we would have to kind of go back and do some changes so I think having an open house of sorts would probably be a good idea to get some input from people at each of the meetings that we hold where there's work sessions we can have public comment so anytime you're working on things if you want to allow public comment they can absolutely get up and and give input it wouldn't be a back and forth question and answer it may be you guys have been talking through things and then at one point there's a time where they can give comments and you know you can listen to the things that they have to say I anticipate um not until probably junior or July or August that you would have a draft for that public hearing and then um actually I take that back September September have a draft of whatever regulations you have into play in front of the Planning Commission and then we would move that forward to the BCC October and that's just the timeline that I'm thinking some of this also will stretch out depending on what kind of cases we have file if we have a month where we have four or five cases come up we may not want to spend any time talking about solar regulations if

we have several months where we don't have a bunch going on it would be good to to get through as much as we can in a short period of Time how soon can we get the extension on on the moratorium on an agenda yeah I don't think that we would need to go prior to May which means if you have a meeting at the beginning of May um and want to make a vote on that I could take it to the BCC at any meeting thereafter um if you want to vote on it in April it I think we just need to kind of pace it based on what other stuff is said I mean it has to be put on an agenda for the public to see we're going to vote on that it we would we wouldn't have to do it as a public hearing where you have to have the full people in favor of people of in opposition you would just make the request direct me to do it and vote on it and then I would take it to the BCC and it would be listed as an agenda item on the BCC I mean maybe we could get through by the end of May I just think that that isn't logical especially if we have any big cases come up over the next few months so that's kind of what I'm thinking what do you do you guys have input um suggestions on procedure what you were thinking you might want to see I think we I'd be looking forward to the information that you're bringing it to us to take a look and you know once we get that we may have a better idea of what the time frame is we don't have anybody at this point even thinking about doing a solar farm do we not that we're aware of yeah yeah that could happen that's the unfortunate thing is we don't know until we know um but no we have not received anything and so at this stage the next deadline for any sort of application of anything is the end of February which would be heard in April okay but typically we would kind of have an idea that it's coming and we

haven't heard of anything if we set regulations and then an applicant application comes in after that can we condition that applicant pass the regulations you know heavier than the regulations that we that will be something that you would have to consider most likely yes you do that now on any case anytime you hear a a rock query or a wedding venue or a um what would be another example of something that you a rodeo if you have if you have something whereby we make recommendations of conditions you can always add to those conditions and the same as if there's conditions within the regulations you are that's what you do is add to it if you want you said you've been compiling what other jurisdictions or cities or Counties have done um when you're talking to your peers I mean have you ever asked them for their feedback or recommendations on what has been working what hasn't been working it's all been it's all been very similar to what we have um so Douglas County allows large scale solar farms and there regulations are very very extensive they are regulating a lot um based on what I have personally seen of that it's it's caused a lot of contention not only because they're allowing solar Farms but they're allowing the large scale utility solar Farms but then they're doing a lot of regulating in regards to people the the applicants end up having to hire a lot of Third Party Experts because I as a planning director I don't know a whole lot of about a lot of stuff and so if you're asking questions about environmental issues or glare or noise or so that you know they're putting into

place regulations that require various experts to be hired and paid for to do studies and then review those and make recommendations and so I think to some degree some locations May over regulate and put a lot of conditions on um and then there will be other locations that really underregulation and just don't have a whole lot of anything and it can be anywhere in that mix and I don't think that there's any one right way or one right answer I think it just has to be based on what we feel is best for Shaunie County um so like I mentioned at the beginning you could walk away and not do any regulations we could add solar as a a use permitted by conditional use permit and then not place any sort of conditions on it um it would allow someone to come in and apply for a conditional use permit for a solar farm and then depending on what it is we know it has to be a conditional use permit but you guys make 100% of the decisions now the downside to that is you don't have really any direction it hasn't gotten any better than what it was when we did these a couple of years ago what we've found for something like um a rock query uh there was Rock query back in like 10 15 years ago where it ended up going to court and a bunch of conditions ended up being placed on a rock query there was like 25 conditions we've ended up taking anytime those Rock queries or sand queries come in we say well here's a copy of 25 conditions that we're going to go ahead and request be added and so instead of it being part of the regulations it's just a standard protocol that we add all of them what you can do is you can put those in the regulations and then when you consider it and approve it you just say it's you have to do everything that's in the regulations so if you write it all out

very specifically you can easily say you have to do it based on the regulations or in the alternative you can have nothing in the regulations or very little and you can say you have to do it based on the regulations but then we're going to add these conditions and then you can do it on a case-by Case basis depending on the specifics of that case could you remove one of those as well like you know your rock where example you wrote 25 recommendations for the one out on Valencia then somebody else comes in want a rock Cory can you at that point under their conditional use permit say we'll take out number three we don't feel like that applies I think it would depend on how we have it written within the regulations um the board of zoning appeals has the authority to Grant a variance or an exception from regulations the Planning Commission does not now does that mean that if there are 25 conditions listed to something that you don't have the authority to give some wiggle room to I I I think that the answerers I don't really know the answer to that unless we had kind of a specific example I think we would want to be careful doing that because if we've considered those as important to all yeah situations so like that example I get worried that we that tied ourselves to a set of regulations that might not fit yeah fit everything why not fit every you know I so an example of that is with say for instance a bed in breakfast right now we have a list of examp of conditions that a bed and breakfast has to meet but it could be that not all of them apply and so I think in into consideration here's the list of all the things that you have to meet or consider but it doesn't mean

that necessarily all of them apply but if you're looking at say for instance you're looking at a solar farm and we've set a regulated setback of 250 fet from a residence and then you have one come in that's 100 feet from a residence if you waved that I think we would not be in a good spot right I think you'd all agree that we need some guidelines so that we're treating everybody the same I mean even though some guidin might not apply I mean we're not you know I don't know I'm somewhat of The Stance conditioning all individual myself well that's kind of what we did before with the two that we you know we looked at at that particular um you were on the commission and it made everybody kind of uncomfortable that we didn't have anything to go by yeah which I think is my question um is it something that we can have some solar expert come in and educate us on that I mean we're making regulations about stuff we don't know or is that up to us to educate ourselves in regards to the ins and outs of solar so um yes we could attempt to find someone the problem being is that there's no federal or like group directive on what is right and what is wrong for everything that someone tells you is okay there's going to be someone else that tells you is not okay I think where we could try and get some direction um my recommendation would be that we try and not only create our regulations but then bounce them off of um input from

people who have some some work in that area um Chris Carrey would be an example of someone who was the person who brought the two solar farm regulations for everg he is a geologist he knows a lot about a lot and has worked on solar Farms so maybe he would have and he said he was like I was very involved in some stuff in Douglas County and he's like I can tell you things that don't work and things that do work and he is you know I I don't know if he's working on the one in Douglas County now but I know that he has had inut on that another we had comment from um an engineer when we were doing this whole process um Eli Eli May was is an engineer with one of the companies here in topa and he has a history and a background with wind and solar and he works for I don't SBB or one he works for one of the engineering companies and he but he came on a personal level we could send something to him and say hey what what do you think about these what are your gives and takes he was maybe so I don't remember I remember that now and so we could we could reach out to him and ask for input or um Josh spotti who came and talked to us who represents wind and solar companies he may have good input so there are people we can reach out to I think that the you know the question of who's an expert on it it's you have can go either way and I I think you'll want to think about I mean are when you say expert are you thinking environmental impact or thinking actual construction how far do we want the setbacks how you know what do we want this thing to look like and sort of pick your topics and that would narrow down for us I mean what are you genuinely interested in learning about would be the suggestion that I would have I mean we can find environmental impact experts but I don't know that that's going to help you

draft zoning regulations that Mak like setbacks for instance that's one that I doesn't to be the same for every case well and so in that situation you could set a minimum whereby you have a minimum and then based on a circumstance of a specific case if you wanted to exceed that in the regulation it could say you have to have a minimum of so many feet from a residence or so many feet from a property line um and then with considerations of various issues you may want to enhance that to additional well I think there's just a lot information I mean you bring up environmental factors you know you say maybe that's not what we're interested in but you know the question is is you know a 25 Acre Farm and you know in lie of a 100 Acre Farm what's you know what are the the pluses and minuses from every kind of an aspect I think we would even if even if we decided that we would we would figure it out at the time I still think we want to know what kind of impact you know based on the size based on maybe even the kind of solar panels you know yeah and you can um definitely when you're considering you could require them to provide I I mean part of it could be that they have to provide a certain report that shows certain impacts whatever those you know whether it be environmental or road or whatever they may be we can ask that they have have to hire an independent inspector or engineer or third party and then that has to be provided to you to consider um the newer Commissioners may not know that you put on the website um a bunch of information from other

counties so we have on the website mainly I just have stuff that was heard at the public hearings but we do have a DropBox that um I sent to each of you that has links to um Kyle's when he did his presentation it has like his PowerPoint um Josh spotties Jeremy good ones it has um copies of PDF regulations from Coffee County Butler County um poac County and I think one other um so there are some out there if you want to open them and read but I mean that's that's up to you if you're going to go out and read them ahead time before coming back the next time Harvey Harvey County was another one um my thought is I will probably go and start cutting and taking from certain ones and you know looking at what each of them did you know what did each of them regulate and are there good ideas and you know on one County they only put 100 foot setback and on another County they put a 1300 foot set back and so you know we can cut and paste and leave kind of blanks like here's an outline of what it is that we want to look at and then fill in those links have you had any conversations with anyone in Jackson County what's going on there um not Jackson County no I've read through some of the stuff that's going on out there right now um but I haven't had any communication with their planning staff it's it's got pretty messing up their yeah Federal lawsuit now yeah I read through the federal lawsuit and um yesid we want to avoid any lawsuits if we can we would like that they also have the difference being we have a moratorium in place and we do not have a

pending application they while they're trying to do their regulations have a either a pending application or a lot of leases with the anticipation that that application is coming and so we have that benefit of the moratorium that kind of gives us that little extra layer of protection do you know if there's been that activity in shy County of purchasing leases on property do you have any head up on that no we haven't we I mean we did with wind we heard that there were wind leases but I have not heard anything about solar but I mean it's not to say I also didn't know for five years that there were wind leases out there before it started coming up as a to they not file a memo at lease with the register needs they might but it doesn't we don't get get that unless we go search for it so are you wanting us to go with your recommendation here just um kind of we were here for discussion I wanted to bring up the topic again and my recommendation to you would be that we meet in March and we really start hashing out some of the specifics of you know going from Chad's direction of you know let's allow solar farm as a conditional use permit but we decide it on a caseby Case basis all the way to the end of you know janette's let's lay it out there Terry's let's get some good regulations and I want to see reports we can start laying specifics so that I can start putting something together that would be my recommendation for procedure above and beyond that I think as you know mentioned we're going to have to just kind of play it out as it goes so at this point there are no um applications no and even if we received one we would turn it away because of the moratorium okay yes so I mean I don't mean I mean any applications for anything no no no no no sorry okay

so we can have a work session but it would not necessarily be a a public we um we would still have it as a public session okay um a public session a work session people can still come and sit and listen but it doesn't necessarily mean that they get to participate okay because it's a work session not a public hearing yeah okay as long as we make that clear I think um so the next couple of things I did list some considerations about just what we've all discussed I'm not going to go over it again these are you know ideas of things that we could consider in regulations and we can talk about that more next month um one thing to have on your scope is that we have had a couple of inqu on battery storage facilities when we did um we have no applications but we've had inquiries now when we did the wind and solar battery storage facilities associated with a wind or a solar farm would either a be Bann or B be under a moratorium but these that have come to us are Standalone battery storage facilities and so they are sort of like the third apple on the tree you've got wind you've got solar you've got battery we didn't talk about it we didn't consider it it had not been a topic that had come up here but I've had at least three if not four inquiries on battery storage facilities and so one thing that we may need to consider is whether we need to if you want to regulate battery storage just like we're talking now with solar um and then the potential on whether or not we would want to do a moratorium now with battery storage as an independent Standalone facility most likely for for it to work they would have to apply to get on the grid it's not like a a solar farm that just feeds

your you can have battery storage that feeds your own house or your own solar panels but they would have to apply to get onto the grid and so we're talking like a probably two-year application process that they take to do that I don't anticipate any immediate action for a battery storage facility but just have it on your radar with that could we've got a moratorium on battery storage associated with a solar installation inside of our County could the solar installation in Jackson County get approved in that battery storage be in shaie County as a standalone like here battery storage Standalone facilities can go anywhere close to I I I believe close to a transmission line you think any of the inquiries that you've had so far have to do with that it's hard to say they're never going to tell us that it's associated with wind or solar because it's Standalone and because once once the electricity from a solar farm or a wind farm gets into the grid it all meshes with all the other electricity that's brought in from all you know all the other collection methods so there's no way for us to differentiate that unless it's directly connected to the solar where it's getting brought into the solar and then into a battery so something to think about so what's your recommendation to get ahead of that um we could do it similar to what we did with wind and solar either consider a moratorium or as we're working on solar regulations and then the zoning regulations also consider level of battery storage

we problem being is that we probably would need to have a public hearing on it like we did with wind and solar we set a standard for how we did it and so we would probably want to have it as a topic have a public hearing allow comments Pro and against before you vote Ved and then make a recommendation to the BCC like we did with the other two um last topic was I was going to talk about zoning amendments but frankly not ready for that yet so we'll let's focus on solar for the next month or so and then just again have it on your radar we've two years ago well in 22 2022 the the zoning amendments to our regulations was on the hot plate and that's really what we were going to work on when I took over as the Director I put it on a standstill because we just didn't have the time or capacity to handle it and it's going to have to come back around we we need to make some changes to our zoning regulations so this is my year of regulations and I would like to start moving forward with it so you guys are the the lucky panel all right um if there's no further business then we'll adjourn the meting oh yeah